1999.06.21
tragic.1
1999.06.21 19:36
tragic.2
1999.06.21 21:24
Re: Response: to lauf-s (i/ii)
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I am very interested in the notion that architectural drawings are readable [and draughtable] as specific texts. I have always enjoyed [and learned from] the reading of drawings. So, if you asked me about the notion of 'draughtsmanship' being the same as delivering architectural narrative, then yes. Presently, the greatest example of architectural draughtsmanship as architectural narrative [for me] is Piranesi's plan of the Campo Marzio. For example, Piranesi infused the theme of inversion into many of the individual building plans composed of repeated inversions of their own component parts.
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I just looked up tragedy in Abram's A Glossary of Literary Terms, and was particularly struck by the following passage:
Aristotle defined tragedy as "the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself," in the medium of poetic language, and in the manner of dramatic rather than narrative presentation, incorporating "incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish catharsis of such emotions." Precisely how to interpret Aristotle's catharsis--which in Greek signifies "purgation," or purification," or both--is much disputed. On two matters, however, a number of modern commentators agree. Aristotle in the first place sets out to account for the undeniable, if extraordinary, fact that many tragic representations of suffering and defeat leave an audience feeling not depressed, but relieved, or even exalted. . . . In the second place, Aristotle uses this distinctive effect, "the pleasure of pity and fear," as the basic way to distinguish the tragic from comic or other forms, and he regards the dramatist's aim to produce and maximize this effect as the principle which determines both the choice of the tragic protagonist and the organization of the tragic plot."
Thanks to you, I can now ask whether the tragic hero of schizophrenia + architectures is indeed architecture itself. Is architecture to be a victim of schizophrenia? Or are both schizophrenia and architecture now victims of each other.
I see the point along the promenade architecturale [in Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye and his Palais des Congrès] where there is both outside and inside as precisely the same as Terragni's representation of Purgatory within the Danteum--the room that manifests equal measures of inside and outside. When I was a child in Catholic school, Purgatory was often described as 'limbo'--essentially being there and not there at the same time. The notion of limbo basically differs, however, from the notion of purgation. Purgatory gets its name because that is where purging (of the profane from the sacred) occurs. This notion of separation also relates directly to the notion bifurcation that you related to the heart of the Villa Savoye.
The notion of limbo also directly describes the inside/outside ramp situation of the Palais des Congrès--not only is the ramp 'suspended' (in limbo) outside the main building block, moreover, half way up the ramp, it changes from an interior ramp to an exterior ramp.
...we will find ourselves on the roof, in the solarium, in Paradiso, within 'the sacred' as our present... ...comes to an end.
Being now in limbo (at the half-way point), however, we have the opportunity to venture/explore within both the profane and sacred realms.
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As to my faulting Tafuri, remember that I only do this relative to Piranesi's Campo Marzio plan, and I fully outlined Tafuri's mistakes on the Campo Marzio within a set of web pages. What Tafuri writes about the Campo Marzio are not mistakes because of my own interpretation of Campo Marzio, but they are mistakes because of what Piranesi actually delineated and labeled in his plan. Tafuri clearly misrepresents what Piranesi did, and all you have to do is look at Piranesi's plan to see where and how Tafuri is wrong there.
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